TikTok has published an internal research study indicating the movie viewing habits of its users, and how advertisers can use the TikTok Spotlight movie marketing tool released last month. The promotional vehicle was designed to help TikTok users discover films, as well as influence their viewing choices and drive audiences to theaters. TikTok’s research found that 47 percent of TikTok users say that while on TikTok they discovered a new movie coming to theaters, and were “inspired to take action, including 36 percent purchasing a ticket,” which they can facilitate in-app through Spotlight. Continue reading Film Promotion Tool TikTok Spotlight Shares Audience Insight

China’s largest cloud computing company, Alibaba Cloud, has released a new computer vision model, Qwen2-VL, which the company says improves on its predecessor in visual understanding, including video comprehension and text-to-image processing in languages including English, Japanese, French, Spanish, Chinese and others. The company says it can analyze videos of more than 20 minutes in length and is able to respond appropriately to questions about content. Third-party benchmark tests compare Qwen2-VL favorably to leading competitors and the company is releasing two open-source versions with a larger private model to come. Continue reading Alibaba’s Latest Vision Model Has Advanced Video Capability

After teasing a big screen interface for months, social media company X has released the beta version of its new TV app called X TV, designed to provide “a massive leap forward in transforming X into a video-first platform,” while looking to compete with industry leaders such as Google’s YouTube. Importantly, the new presentation provides X with video-specific play for ad partners, which the Elon Musk-owned company has been attempting to lure back after loosened content moderation standards sent many fleeing. X CEO Linda Yaccarino said the X TV app is debuting ad-free, but reports indicate the company will introduce ad options in the future. Continue reading X Launches a Beta Version of Its Video Offering on App Stores

An AI-powered coding app called Cursor is building a fanbase, with everyone from hobbyists to engineers subscribing to the service. The platform reportedly has 30,000 paying customers, among them employees at OpenAI, Midjourney and Perplexity. Referred to as “the ChatGPT of coding,” Cursor uses popular models including GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet to automate building apps and other coding tasks. Cursor was launched by two-year-old startup Anysphere, which has raised more than $60 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive Capital. Continue reading New AI Coding App Cursor Gains Following and $60M in Funds

A federal judge has partially blocked a new Texas law by disallowing requirements that social platforms identify minors and filter content for their safety. The Securing Children Online Through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act, signed last year, threatens free speech due to its “monitoring and filtering” requirements the court ruled as the basis for a temporary injunction. Under the law, registered users under 18 will be subject to limited data collection, target advertising bans and parental consent for financial transactions. SCOPE would affect a range of online services, with large social platforms a focus. Continue reading Judge Blocks Sections of a Texas Law Meant to Protect Minors

Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing will be investigated, pledged UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Lisa Nandy in response to protests by thousands of disappointed fans who failed to secure tickets to the Oasis reunion tour. Fans waiting in online Ticketmaster queues saw prices shoot up by as much as £200 before they were able to make a purchase. Thousands more reportedly couldn’t even access the site to buy tickets, resorting instead to ticket-resale sites in what is being described as the biggest concert debacle since Taylor Swift fans were frustrated by their attempts to use the service to purchase 2023 Eras Tour tickets. Continue reading Concert Ticket Dynamic Pricing Draws UK Government Scrutiny

Huawei Technologies Co. continued to grow revenue for the sixth consecutive quarter, tallying $33.6 billion for the period ending in June, a 33.7 percent increase year-over-year. The privately held company releases limited financial information. The net profit margin at the half-year mark was said to be 13.2 percent, equivalent to $7.7 billion. Bloomberg extrapolated that to profit of about $5 billion for the quarter, which represents an 18.6 percent decline over the same period last year when asset sales boosted results. The overall trend saw Huawei and other Chinese smartphone manufacturers continuing to gain ground against Apple. Continue reading Huawei Flourishes Despite Sanctions as U.S. Trial Approaches

Musician and tech entrepreneur will.i.am is launching an interactive radio service built around conversational AI. Called RAiDiO.FYI, the service lets listeners talk to artificial intelligence serving as DJs as part of a one-on-one exchange designed as a personalized listening experience. RAiDiO.FYI’s AI DJs are trained to converse about topics ranging from music to sports, weather and breaking news. The new service is an offshoot of the performer’s FYI.AI, a platform of digital tools for artists. Users can access RAiDiO.FYI for free on the FYI app for iPhone and Android. Continue reading Will.i.am Launches AI-Powered Interactive Service RAiDiO.FYI

In an effort to create a safer environment for teens, social platform Snapchat is providing educators with resources to familiarize them with the app and help them understand how students use it. The company has launched a website called “An Educator’s Guide to Snapchat.” The announcement, timed to the start of the new school year, comes as lawmakers have been pressuring social networks to do more to protect children, with Florida and Indiana going so far as to enact school cell phone bans. Legislators in California and New York have been exploring similar prohibitions. Continue reading Snapchat Puts Focus on Teen Safety Resources for Teachers

Hanoi Police in conjunction with global anti-piracy group Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has closed down what is being called the largest pirate streaming operation in the world. The takedown of the notorious Fmovies and other active piracy sites involved the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations unit and the U.S. Department of Justice International Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (ICHIP) program working with Vietnamese authorities. In 2023, Fmovies was ranked by Similarweb as the world’s 11th most popular website in the TV, Movies & Streaming category. Continue reading Authorities Shutter Notorious Vietnamese Piracy Site Fmovies

Nvidia has had another impressive quarter. Record revenue of $30 billion in Q2 was up 122 percent from a year ago, while data center revenue of $26.3 billion marked a 154 percent increase from the same period in 2023. The performance was seen by many as an assurance of AI’s staying power, although others raised concern that if the AI companies buying chips do not start generating profits soon, the sugar high of the two-year AI boom could precede a crash. Nvidia took the occasion to tout its next-generation Blackwell chips, reassuring investors that a mid-production “tweak” would not delay release. Continue reading AI Boom Continues to Drive Strong Nvidia Revenue and Profit

Google is giving Gemini Advanced, Enterprise and Business subscribers the ability to create personalized AI assistants, which the company calls “Gems.” “Create your own personal AI experts on any topic you want,” the Alphabet company says. The search giant is also reintroducing Gemini’s image generation capabilities with its latest Imagen 3 model, which will be available to everyone. Gemini, which is Google’s ChatGPT competitor, will again have the ability to generate images of people, something Google disabled in February after controversy over some of the images. The company announced it has implemented new guardrails. Continue reading Gemini Gets Custom Gems AI Assistants and Adds Imagen 3

In a move toward increased transparency, San Francisco-based AI startup Anthropic has published the system prompts for three of its most recent large language models: Claude 3 Opus, Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3 Haiku. The information is now available on the web and in the Claude iOS and Android apps. The prompts are instruction sets that reveal what the models can and cannot do. Anthropic says it will regularly update the information, emphasizing that evolving system prompts do not affect the API. Examples of Claude’s prompts include “Claude cannot open URLs, links, or videos” and, when dealing with images, “avoid identifying or naming any humans.” Continue reading Anthropic Publishes Claude Prompts, Sharing How AI ‘Thinks’

New York-based ElevenLabs is going global with its generative AI text-to-speech reader app, which can narrate writings in 32 languages with thousands of voices from which to choose. The audio startup promises “high quality, human-like” AI voices that are “emotionally and contextually aware,” adapting delivery of written cues “to achieve a high emotional range.” ElevenLabs has focused on “creative workflow,” with a voice isolator and audio effects generator tools. Its catalog includes the voices of celebrities Judy Garland, Laurence Olivier, James Dean and Burt Reynolds. Custom models for translation and voiceover work using contemporary actors is a future possibility. Continue reading ElevenLabs Reader App Is Available Globally in 32 Languages

Canadian generative video startup Viggle AI, which specializes in character motion, has raised $19 million in Series A funding. Viggle was founded in 2022 on the premise of providing a simplified process “to create lifelike animations using simple text-to-video or image-to-video prompts.” The result has been robust adoption among meme creators, with many viral videos circulating among social media platforms powered by Viggle, including one featuring Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker mimicking the movements of rapper Lil Yachty. Viggle’s Discord community has four million members including “both novice and experienced animators,” according to the company. Continue reading Viggle AI Raises $19 Million on the Power of Memes and More